Ha’aretz, Israel
March 5 2010

Capital Anglos mobilize against practice of spitting at Christians

By Raphael Ahren

Shocked by growing reports about Ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at
Christians in Jerusalem’s Old City, a group of Anglo residents is now
mobilizing against this ugly practice. Although such incidents
reportedly have decreased since a council of Haredi rabbis issued an
official condemnation in January in response to the public outcry,
Christian and Jewish activists agree the problem is unlikely to
disappear anytime soon.

"I felt I had to protest," said Andrea Katz, 57, who is planning
several events within Jerusalem’s liberal Orthodox Yedidya
congregation to show solidarity with the Christian community and
educate the English-speaking Jewish public about their Christian
neighbors. "I don’t think that all of a sudden the Haredi world is
going to say: Oh my Gosh, we did so wrong, let’s stop this. But
somehow I had to do something; I just couldn’t sit around and do
nothing."

For years, there have been incidents of Haredi youths spitting at
Christian clergymen in the Old City and near the Mea She’arim
neighborhood, according to several Jewish and Christian residents of
Jerusalem. One cleric said told a European news site that the spitting
was "almost a daily experience."

In late 2009 such incidents started to mount, provoking a growing
number of complaints and increasing press coverage. The Haredi
Community Tribunal of Justice subsequently published a statement
condemning such acts, calling them a "desecration of God’s name."
Christian leaders met in January with Foreign Ministry staff and
representatives of the Jerusalem municipality and the Haredi community
to tackle the problem.

Over the last two months the number of spitting incidents declined
somewhat, according to Archbishop Aris Shirvanian, of Jerusalem’s
Armenian Patriarchate, who says that in the 12 years he has lived in
Jerusalem has been spat on about 50 times. "It’s good to see the
reduction of this phenomenon, but to eradicate it completely may take
time. I don’t think it will be stopped in a fortnight or so," he told
Anglo File. He praised the Baka-based Yedidya community for its
efforts to raise awareness but added the events planned failed to
reach the perpetrators within the Haredi community. "It’s a good step
forward, but more has to be done."

Yedidya, which was founded in 1980 by a group of British and American
immigrants, currently plans three events. The first, a lecture, is
scheduled for March 15 and will take place in the synagogue. Besides
Katz and Shirvanian, the panelists include the director of the
Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, Daniel Rossing; the
head of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, Rabbi Dr.
Ron Kronish; religion professor Yiska Harani; Fr. Athanasius Makora,
of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land; and Dr. Debbie Weissman,
who heads the International Council of Christians and Jews.

The shul also plans to organize visits to Jerusalem’s Christian
communities. "The majority of congregants – even if we’re from abroad
– is certainly ignorant of the Eastern and Orthodox churches that are
here," Katz said. "In order for people to sympathize they have to know
whom they are sympathizing with."

Around Easter, Katz is hoping to create what she calls a "human
corridor." Marching with the Armenian community while they carry a
Cross would be inappropriate for an Orthodox congregation, the
Buffalo, New York, native explained. Rather, she’d like her community
to "simply stand, to make a corridor – no words, no speeches – so that
they [the Armenian clerics] can walk from [the Church of] St. James to
[the Church of] the Holy Sepulchre. Nothing big, just to show there
are people who care and don’t find this kind of behavior acceptable."

Katz said she felt the need to become active when she hosted a group
of officials from the U.S.-based Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
They wanted to learn more about the phenomenon of Jews spitting at
Christians – something she had never heard of. "They were from an
organization abroad, and they knew about something that was going on
that I found horrifying and I didn’t know about. I live in this city
since 1974, and I had no idea."

Wondering what could bring religious people to commit such ugly acts,
Katz surmised that some Jews might not have learned yet what it means
to be the majority in a country.

"It’s still very new for us," she said. "We’re taking our experiences
from the Diaspora and acting and reacting in way that would befit a
powerless minority. Now that we do have power simply because Jews are
‘in control,’ we are not protecting the minorities and allowing the
Christian or the Muslim minority to practice freely what they want to
practice…. We haven’t got our heads around the fact that our job is
now to protect them."

Kronish, of the Interreligious Coordinating Council, said the spitting
is rooted in "penned-up anger" about the long history of Christian
anti-Semitism. "The Haredim give their children a distorted education,
which is conducive to such behavior," he said. Despite the recent
decline in spitting incidents, he asserts the "underlying fear and
ignorance is still there" and can only be combated if people learn
about the other.

"People fear the unknown," he explains. "The unknown is the Christians
and the reasons we’re doing this educational event with Yedidya is
because people felt: Gee, we really don’t know who these Christians
are over there in the Old City. We don’t know anything about them – we
live here in Baka, they live over there behind those walls. It’s time
for us to know more about them."

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